Undiscovered Scotland

 

This is the hugely entertaining story of the intense friendship of two girls, first brought together in 1812 by circumstances when one of them arrives to stay in the family home of the other to recover from a mystery ailment. The settings are mainly real, as are the characters. The story largely revolves around Isabel Baxter whose home, the misleadingly named "The Cottage" lies on the eastern edge of Dundee. The new arrival at the start of the book is Mary Godwin, who would later, as Mary Shelly, become the much better remembered of the two.

Mairi Kidd brings her characters to life on the page in a utterly convincing way. In her author's note at the end of the book, she gives the reader an insight into the depth of historical research she undertook in order to plot and populate her story, and she also paints a picture of where the story is based on real events and where she had the freedom to fill in gaps in the historical record. She also explains where she chose to make minor alterations to events or names. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this book is that the huge amount of background research underpinning it is only obvious to the reader in the seamless way the story progresses, and in the entirely convincing settings and characters.

This is a book we'd wholeheartedly recommend to anyone looking for highly entertaining fiction that's a little out of the ordinary.

You get a good sense of the story from the publisher's description of it. "Dundee, 1812. Isabel Baxter awaits the arrival of Mary Godwin, a girl of fierce intelligence and grand passions, sent north to recover from a mysterious ailment. The Baxter family home, nestled in woodland by the river Tay, seems the perfect retreat. But The Cottage is a place of secrets, and Mary is no ordinary guest. As the girls grow closer, their friendship becomes all-consuming, haunted by memory, fuelled by feverish creativity, and shadowed by something monstrous. Inspired by true events, this is an immersive reimagining of the young Mary Shelley before she became the author of Frankenstein. A story of girlhood, obsession, and the birth of a literary legend."